On Episode 114 of The Edge of Innovation, we’re talking with executive advisor Scott Monty about how innovators can be peripheral visionaries!

Hacking the Future of Business!
On Episode 114 of The Edge of Innovation, we’re talking with executive advisor Scott Monty about how innovators can be peripheral visionaries!
On Episode 113 of The Edge of Innovation, we’re talking with executive advisor Scott Monty about looking to the future of innovation and learning from the past!
On Episode 112 of The Edge of Innovation, we’re talking with executive advisor Scott Monty about innovation and marketing strategies!
Introduction
Connection to Innovation
New All Over Again
Influencer Marketing
The Common Thread of Marketing
Customer Experience Is Important!
Make Life More Convenient For Your Customer
Results of Focusing on Customer Convenience
The Obvious is Not Always So Obvious
Conclusion: “Stay Curious”
More Episodes
Show Notes
Paul: Good afternoon, everyone. Today we’re talking with Scott Monty of Scott Monty Strategies in Canton, Michigan. Welcome, Scott. Are you there?
Scott: I am here. Good to be with you, Paul.
Paul: So. Tell me. Where are we talking to you? What is your connection with innovation?
Scott: Wow. Uh…
Paul: It’s a big question, I know. We’ve gotta just put some handles on it.
Scott: Nothing like jumping right in. I like that. Well, I think there’s a few different ways to look at innovation. And I think innovation in its more common form is thought of in terms of what new wiz-bang thing are you inventing or creating. And, I think that’s perfectly valid.
My take on things actually comes by looking backward, if that makes any sense. I am a classics major from a long time ago. Communications and marketing professional. And what I’ve realized over the course of two decades in the business is that human nature remains the same. You know, we keep making the same mistakes over and over again. We keep reacting the same way to things.
And my message to executives when I work with them and their teams is to not think about the latest trend or technology per se, but to focus on the throughput, that line that we see that, that takes us through humanity for all time and then to decide how you’re going to interact with someone based on knowing that about them. And, you may end up on various platforms. You may end up with different ways of speaking to people. But in a lot of ways, we’re going back to the basics, the things that we knew from 40, 50, 60 years ago that worked in business that somehow we’ve thrown aside. And it seems like they’re new all over again.
Paul: Interesting. Do you find that the people you’re working with think they’re new?
Scott: In some cases, but in other cases, people just kind of slap their forehead and go, “Oh, that’s so… It’s so obvious. Why didn’t I think of that?” And I think this is, again, human nature. We get so focused on what’s right in front of us and on the things that are most important to us that sometimes we neglect to pick our heads up and see the forest through the trees, as it were.
Paul: Right, absolutely. It’s a very obvious statement when you say it, but yet it’s something that everybody needs to be reminded of. Can you give us some anecdotes of where that’s happened just in your recent experience? Not necessarily naming names or products or thing but just sort of some context… Because I think there’s a lot of people who look at the landscape around them and think, “Everybody else has it more together than I do.”
Scott: Yeah, that’s the common thing. And guess what — nobody has a playbook. You know, when we led digital and social at Ford from 2008 to 2014, we were doing things that had never been done before. We were the first car company to reveal a vehicle on Facebook. We were the first ones to really embrace influencers, right? And here’s a topic that’s really relevant now.
We hear all about influencers, influencer marketing, etc. Well, in 2009, Ford put together a program called the Fiesta Movement. And the idea was this. Ford was in the midst of reinventing itself of becoming one company all around the world instead of a bunch of different siloed organizations. And they wanted to share the same engineering expertise, the same marketing expertise, and really begin to work at scale.
And the idea was, well, if we’re going to create a car — let’s say the Ford Focus — it’s going to be the same all the way around the world. And the Fiesta had just snuck in under cycle but somebody looked at this small car and they said, “Hey, you know what? What is coming out in Europe this year. We’re going to bring it out in America the following year. Why don’t we bring 100 of these vehicles over from Europe and put them in the hands of 100 people who have Twitter accounts, YouTube channels, Flickr accounts, blogs, etc. — and again, this is 11 years ago — and give these cars to a hundred people for six months. And all the requirement was they had to make one video a month. And there was a common theme that everybody stuck to each month.
But the genius here is what Ford did was take all of those people’s feeds — their Twitter feeds, their blog, RSS feeds, etc. and aggregated them on a Ford-owned website and allowed that content to be viewed, unfiltered, unedited, in real time, which did a couple of things.
One, it showed how confident Ford was in its product design, that, people weren’t going to find anything inherently wrong with the car. But number two, it also showed that Ford is willing to take the word of third-party individuals —not only its marketing team — and that’s who people connect with. People like themselves. Right?
So, I recently talked about this as a case study when I was giving a strategic communications speech, and, again, this stuff is 11 years old, and yet it still works today because the principles are inherently the same.
Paul: Right. Right. It’s sort of like physics and mathematics. It really doesn’t change all that much. It’s really how we apply it.
Scott: Yeah, I like that.
Paul: So, that’s fascinating. What do you see as you’re dealing with different people? Is there a common thread of… I’ll just say it. Is there a common thread? I’ll go deeper on that as we go, of reaction or action or lack of action by your consultees, I guess? Is that the word? The people you consult with.
Scott: Why it’s interesting because whether you’re talking about the content that they’re producing online or the experience that they’re creating in real life at a store or a… wherever they’ve got customers coming in, they’re focused on getting attention. And, I’ve worked with a number of auto dealers, and there’s a group that continues to pay for new customer acquisition. You know, that’s where most of their budget goes — into lead generation. I think that’s the case of a lot of B2B companies. They focus on lead generation.
And at the same time, they’re not putting a lot of effort into the actual customer experience. What are you doing to retain your customers? What are you doing to make them feel like they’re part of a community, like you are bringing them value every day rather than they’ve just signed the contract with you?
And, and I think if people can get in the mindset of retention rather than attention that will start to turn the bow of this big aircraft carrier that we’re trying to swing around.
Paul: Okay. So, are you seeing that with the people that you’re working with, that they don’t, comprehend customer experience as the goal? They’re so focused on lead generation?
Scott: Well, I think they certainly want to do what’s right for the customer, but, again, it’s kind of lifting your head up and understanding outside of your own sphere. So many executives, brand managers, they get up first thing in the morning, and that’s all they’re thinking about is their company, their brand. And you can’t blame them. Again, human nature.
But I like to remind them that unless your brand is Dunkin’ or Starbucks, other people aren’t waking up first thing in the morning thinking about you. They have other priorities. They’re getting the kids off for school. They’re planning for 15 conference calls. They’re trying to put a PowerPoint together and on and on and on. So when people do have an opportunity to interact with your brand, what are you doing to bring them value? What are you doing to make things more convenient for them? What are you doing to make their lives a little bit easier through that busy day?
Scott: So, I’ll give you an example of how this actually came to life with an auto client. I got a call from a gentleman I’ve known for years, certainly from when I was at Ford. He’s the number one Honda dealer in the country. Number one used Honda dealer in the country. Number three, new.
And he called me up and he said, “We gotta work together.”
And I said, “Well, I don’t know how much more I can help you. It seems like you’re doing pretty well already.”
Well, this is a guy who’s never satisfied with the status quo. And he said to me, “Scott, dealers are dinosaurs. We’re dead, and we don’t even know it. The dealership model is broken.” And first of all, this was just music to my ears.
And I said, “Okay, well, how would you like to start?” Right? So, I went to his dealership, and it’s a little lot in Queens, New York. And I walked into the showroom, and cars are crammed into that showroom. I don’t know if you’ve ever been in an auto showroom in a city. They make use of every square foot of floor space that they can so that you’re turning sideways to get between the cars in some cases. So already the, the experience felt like it was, it was difficult.
Paul: Suboptimal.
Scott: There you go. Suboptimal. I love that, Paul.
So he explained to me that he had 180,000 people in his customer email database, which is impressive in and of itself. And he said sales are going pretty well.
And I said, “Well, tell me about your service offering.”
And he said, “Well, our service base…” I can’t remember how many he said. Maybe 12 service bases. He said, “We are booked out six weeks in advance. We’re 100% full.”
I said, “Okay, tell me more. When are you open?”
He said, “We’re open seven days a week, 7 AM to 7 PM.”
And first of all, I thought that was impressive because not every dealer is open on weekends. In fact, in Michigan, they can’t be open on Sundays. It’s one of the blue laws. But I looked at that. I said, “Seven days a week, 7 to 7. Okay, you’re operating at 50%.”
And he said, “What?”
I said, “Yeah, what about the other 12 hours of the day?”
And he said, “Well, who’s going to want to bring their car in at 10:00 at night?”
And I said, “No one. That’s why you’re going to go and pick their car up from them.” And you could have seen his head explode, you know, right in front of me.
And by selecting a couple of vendors and designing a process whereby it was completely transparent to the customer, almost like the Domino’s pizza tracker, when your car gets into the oven, so to speak. They’re updating you. They’re sending pictures of what’s wrong with your car, because so many people have a distrust with dealerships and wondering if they’re getting screwed. They’ll say, “Okay, here’s your old brake pads. Here’s what new ones look like. Would you like us to change them?”
And guess what? You’re comfy at home on your couch watching sports or the latest reality show or The Crown or whatever you’re watching. And this text comes through, and it’s as simple as pressing a button to say “approve” and signing off on it and then you know your car’s going to be delivered to you in your driveway the next morning before you even need to take it to work. That’s a level of convenience and customer design that didn’t take rocket science, and it really didn’t take a lot of comprehensive or complicated technology. It was just about changing your frame of reference to think like the customer rather than to think like a traditional dealer.
Paul: Right. What were their results so far?
Scott: There have been incredible results. The first six months saw a 36% lift in not only the volume but in the amount of each repair order which dropped directly to the bottom line, because there were very few overhead expenses. They had to put on an additional shift of mechanics, but that was minor.
But there was an added side benefit that no one saw coming. As they were open in the middle of the night and as Uber and Lyft drivers were finishing their shifts and driving by, guess what. These guys need an oil change just about every week, and they just found somebody that’s open their hours. And they’ve become the new best friends of this dealership. And when these guys put 10,000 miles on their cars each week, they’re going to need new cars or used cars in short order. So, guess where they’re going to go to start doing that?
So, not only have you created a sense of loyalty and convenience from your existing customer base, but you’re actually reaching new customers that would have never thought about walking in your doors before.
Paul: You know, it’s funny. When innovators talk about an innovation, before they say it, it’s not obvious. The minute they say it, it’s completely obvious.
Scott: Right.
Paul: And, you have to arbitrate that because the minute you say it, “Well, that’s obvious, Scott.” Well, it wasn’t before you said it.
Scott: Yeah, if it was so obvious, why didn’t you figure it out? Right?
Paul: Exactly.
Scott: Yeah.
Paul: And that’s a sign of a good innovation. It’s like that’s the night and day difference.
Scott: Well, you know, it’s interesting because, I’ve worked with a number of executives who will dismissively say, “Well, I need a solution for such and such, and I’ll know it when I see it.” Well, no you won’t because if you did, you would have already… You know, you would have mortgaged your house to get opening day shares of Netflix or of Amazon. It’s that kind of thing.
Paul: That’s a great point. I mean, I’ve understood that, but that’s a great point. “I’ll know it when I see it.”
“Well, why didn’t you buy Apple?”
Scott: Yeah, exactly.
Paul: Yeah. That’s a really good point.
As you’re aware we’ve been talking with Scott Monty of Scott Monty Strategies. There’s gonna be a whole bunch of show notes based on what we’ve talked about and we’ll have his contact information there as well.
So, Scott, thank you very much for coming on the show. We appreciate it.
Scott: It’s my great pleasure Paul, thank you.
This is Part 1 of 3 our interview with Scott Monty. Stay tuned for Parts 2 & 3 coming soon!
On Episode 108 of The Edge of Innovation, we’re digging in our archives to bring back one of our most popular podcasts – “Big Data.” We’re talking about what it is and how it can help your business!
On Episode 96 of The Edge of Innovation, we’re talking with entrepreneur Joshua Sturgeon, about finding the right digital marketing platforms to grow your business!
How Josh Got Into The Marketing Field
Growing Up With Entrepreneurial Tendencies
Advice For Somebody Starting Out As An Entrepreneur
Is SEO The Right Fit For You?
Finding Underutilized Paid Channels
Facebook As A Marketing Platform
EmberTribe – Working In A Remote Environment
Conclusion
More Episodes
Show Notes
Paul: So here today, we’re with Josh Sturgeon of EmberTribe.
Okay, now EmberTribe. How old is this company?
Josh: EmberTribe is about three and half years at the time of this recording. We started the end of 2015.
Paul: Did you go to school to become an EmberTriber? What do you call yourself?
Josh: That’s my actual degree. No, I didn’t. I fell into this world out of a hybrid of necessity and curiosity and interest. I graduated into the heart of the recession in 2007 and at the time I also had a full load of grad school work and so I really just needed to find ways to make money and my geek way into all of this was through a dying phonebook company, where I was actually a door to door salesman and my one job was to try and introduce this digital offering to keep the company alive. And spoiler alert, the company went under. I didn’t go beyond three months there, but what it did introduce me to, was this idea of digital marketing, specifically SEO or search engine optimization.
And it just blew my mind that you could show up for just for specific things, you offer it as a business, and that people could find you for those things on the web and just do business for you. That just ignited a passion and excitement for this and now twelve or thirteen years ago and I …there was no formal education for it and so it was a lot of reading blogs and like building your own website and seeing what worked and didn’t work. So, I did that for a while.
Eventually, I worked for a larger agency and got to do this at a larger scale with companies like Staples, Thermo Scientific, and Unilever. But then I really learned the most when I was building a business with my wife at the time and needed to kind of put our own money on the line and figure out what was going to be the best fit for us as a small business. And so that’s where I think my learnings really took off because I was in the trenches so to speak, spending my own money. And yeah, that’s kind of the genesis, I guess, of how I got into all of this.
Paul: When you were a teenager did you say, “I’m going to be in digital marketing”?
Josh: No, not at all. When I was a teenager and even into college, I was very into music. I was very into that more creative side of things.
Paul: You wanted to be a rock star?
Josh: I wanted to be a rock star! No, not necessarily. I was more like singer, songwriter. I also taught music too, so I ran like a little music studio and I taught kids how to play guitar. So basically, I was really into that but I think that created an impulse, not the reality of the real world and I sort of channeled that creativity into how to make money and how to do that in a flexible way because time was constrained for me.
Paul: There are certain people, you sound like you have entrepreneurial tendencies. Would you agree with that? How did that surface itself when you were really young?
Josh: When I was really young, I was hustling. I was selling rocks at the end of my driveway.
Paul: Right, okay.
Josh: Selling rocks that I thought were cool. I probably called them crystals or something too just out of innocence but yeah. Then I started a handyman service when I was a kid. Look, I think everybody has that “I sold lemonade at the end of the street story” but…
Paul: Well, no. Not everybody. It is a difference in wiring from what I’ve seen.
Josh: Yeah, that might be.
Paul: So, what did you think? You were going to be an entrepreneur? Were you going to go work for somebody?
Josh: You know, it’s funny. I didn’t really frame it that way in my mind. Like throughout highschool and throughout college I found ways – because I was really into music – I found ways to fund my own recording and lifted albums and all of that was kind of an entrepreneurial journey in and of itself. I don’t think I possessed the language yet to understand like, “No, I don’t want to work for the man. I want to do my own thing.” It was more out of a matter of necessity and circumstance that I ended up working for myself in the beginning.
But yeah. Then later I came to realize that some of my core values are to have freedom of lifestyle, to have independence, to be able to have open horizons. As I’ve gotten older and self-reflected more, I’ve been like, “Oh yeah. This has been in my DNA for a long time. I just couldn’t label it back then.
Paul: What would be one piece of advice to somebody that was starting out now, as sort of an entrepreneur? I know you do some mentoring. In doing mentoring, you can’t be as honest as one might want so we’re anonymizing everyone out there. What would be your anonymous advice to people?
Josh: Man, I’d say you probably have a vision in your head and in your heart about what this could look like. That might be ten years from now. I would say, divide that by a thousand. What’s the one step that you can take now? I think the biggest mistake that I see with a lot of entrepreneurs is that they so badly want to be in business for themselves, but they so badly want this product to come into existence, that they are afraid to see it not work and therefore, they never start.
Paul: Oh interesting. So, they never fail.
Josh: They never fail because they never start. And you see people working on a logo for six months and you see people doing whatever but putting off the hard thing and the hard thing is usually talking to somebody who isn’t your mom or your dad or your friend or your girlfriend and getting them to give you money for the thing that you want to produce. And that’s not greed or that’s not anything else except validation and you need to get validation for what you’re trying to build otherwise you’re going to spend a lot of time building something that nobody wants.
Paul: Right.
Josh: You might feel good about what the future might possibly hold but when push comes to shove, there’s no business there.
Paul: I’ve also found when you, the entrepreneur, engages with anybody, most people don’t want to hurt your feelings.
Josh: That’s true!
Paul: And so, they’re going to say, “Oh yeah! That’s great!” And if you shift the conversation, “Well, will you give me twenty dollars right now and I’ll deliver for you in six months? “Oh, I’d never pay twenty dollars for that!” And you start to get to the truth of the matter.
Josh: Or I need to talk to my wife first, you know.
Paul: Yeah, exactly. That’s really what you want to get to. And also, to have other people to ask on your behalf. I have a friend who’s doing this.
Josh: Is SEO the right fit for you? It really depends. I mean, a lot of startups that we work with, like they’re inventing a new category so there’s nobody even searching for what they’re doing so SEO would be the wrong fit for them until they’ve generated some demand for the new category.
So, rather than just take a pre-ordained checklist of different marketing channels that somebody else is recommending you do and then retrofitting that to your business, it’s better to kind of have an understanding of where you sit in the market, who you’re trying to reach, and then prioritize your spend on marketing from there.
Paid is usually a really great option so start with that because you can learn very quickly and then you can build the content and then capture the SEO traffic over a longer period of time but at least start with renting. It’s almost like going to the customer and asking for the money now. Then you’ll know now if it’s going to work or not.
Paul: Yeah. Well, I think an important take away for me here is this identification of the importance of the different channels because SEO isn’t bad but it’s really hard to rule the world in SEO. But advertising, I can always buy an ad to my target market. Then it becomes, do I offer something that’s quality?
Josh: Right.
Paul: Is that fair?
Josh: That is fair. I mean, and I want to be fair and give paid the same treatment and to say that you are competing in an auction, right?
Josh: To give you a very specific example. We have a client who’s going up against Salesforce and Blackbaud in Google search, those paid ads. That’s expensive man. Those guys are spending millions of dollars in search. And so, the big innovation for that client was finding another paid channel that was underutilized at the time, for business to business, which was Facebook and we reduced their cost probably by eighty percent by making that change.
Paul: That’s interesting because both of those are very business oriented, very C level finance-oriented products. And you got to those people through Facebook?
Josh: On Facebook, yeah.
Paul: When was this, timeframe wise?
Josh: This was probably 2016 going into 17.
Paul: Okay. Is that viable today?
Josh: It’s still viable but there might be better alternatives depending on what your business is.
Paul: Maybe LinkedIn?
Josh: LinkedIn is very expensive but also very targeted.
Josh: But here’s the takeaway though. Although Facebook has now more limited business to business targeting options than it did before they removed some of those things, what they do have is two and a half billion people in their ecosystem, so just statistically your audience is there. If you consider even the internet in the population of the world, that’s a massive market share so the chances are that the people that you want to reach, is probably on that platform or in that ecosystem somewhere. It’s just a matter of, can you get to them the most efficient way possible. It’s worth a shot.
Paul: My questions have always been around, will those people make buy decisions in that context? Sort of like if you’re swimming, you’re not interested in buying a TV. It’s sort of like that just doesn’t make sense. Whereas, if I just finished lunch, I’m not interested in looking at restaurant ads. So, I’ve never been able to understand how we go to a Facebook where… I use it for figuring out how my family’s doing and friends and then all of a sudden, I see something about a technology ad, I’m a geek. Those two don’t give necessarily.
Josh: Yeah and I think one key distinction and strategy for using these channels is to not necessarily go for the sale in one click. Statistically, we know that over ninety-five percent of the people that visit your website will never return again unless you’re given another opportunity to. So, there’s different tools that we can use to give you multiple – what we would call maybe “ad bats” to try to buy.
But one major strategy especially in the business services side is just capture tension and capture a point of contact so even if they’re not ready at that part of their buyers’ journey to buy from you or to even schedule a sales call they might be interested in some piece of content that you created or something else in exchange for an email address or some other information so you can email them later or message them later. That’s a good way to come off it.
Paul: Cool!
Paul: Well we’ve been talking with Josh Sturgeon of EmberTribe. Where are you based?
Josh: Yeah. Oh, that’s a loaded question. So, I’m here north of Boston. And I have a business partner who’s in North Carolina but the rest of our team of about twenty people, is spread about nine different states across the US. We’re a completely distributed team.
Paul: Oh, that’s cool. Now do you service clients all over the world or do you just work in one city in Alabama?
Josh: No, it’s all over the US and Canada and some of those companies are multinational so they’ll have different locations but for the most part, no, it’s not constrained by location at all. And, just like as our team works together in a remote environment, we’re working virtually with a lot of these clients as well.
Paul: Well, there’ll be ample opportunity in the shownotes and links for both Josh individually and for EmberTribe. And I just wanted to thank you for coming in and it sounds fascinating. It’s never as simple as we want to make it but it’s also not as complicated, especially with a Sherpa like you, guiding us through it.
Josh: Yeah, definitely my heartbeat for anybody is, just start. Just try. Your upside is so potentially high that it could transform your business in a way that you could never have imagined it’s worth at least at test to run.
Yeah, Paul, thanks for having me. This was a great conversation!
Paul: Absolutely, alright. Thank you.
This is Part 3 of 3 our interview with Joshua Sturgeon.
If you missed part 1, about how to spark growth with digital marketing, you can listen to it here!
If you missed part 2, about how knowing your customers will help you with digital marketing, you can listen to it here!